Grand designs: Vision, power and nation building in America's alliance with Ngo Dinh Die&dotbelow;m, 1954--1960

This dissertation re-interprets the formation and evolution of the alliance between the United States and the South Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Die&dotbelow;m during the period 1954--1960.{09}Instead of emphasizing the role of geopolitics, this re-interpretation is centered on ideas ---both Vietnamese and American---about modernization, development and democracy. By examining how Vietnamese and Americans sought to realize these ideas in the nation-building programs they implemented, I demonstrate that the US and the Die&dotbelow;m governments were animated by different visions of how a postcolonial nation might be established in South Vietnam. These visions were not absolutely different or inherently incompatible; nonetheless, they were not the same, and the two sides found themselves increasingly at odds with each other over questions of nation building policy and strategy. In the long run, the differences between the two visions contributed mightily to the unraveling of the US-Die&dotbelow;m alliance and led to deeper US involvement in the Vietnam War.; This dissertation differs from existing scholarship on this subject not only in its reliance on Vietnamese sources and perspectives but also in its emphasis on the agency of Vietnamese actors. Instead of representing Die&dotbelow;m as the abjectly dependent client of the US, he is shown to have exercised great initiative in his dealings with his American allies, and to have frequently frustrated American efforts to influence the form and content of his nation building programs. Yet Die&dotbelow;m himself was frequently surprised by the challenges to his rule which arose from various quarters within South Vietnam. The thesis concludes that the American intervention in Vietnam and the origins of the Vietnam War were more complex and more directly shaped by Vietnamese ideas and actions than scholars have previously recognized.